Menu

nostalgia

“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”, she said. As I slowly walked away from her desk. Life is all about last looks, this one was no exception.

I imagined myself doing different things with my life. Going on different adventures, then what was happening before me. I never imagined coming back home. I never thought that failing was an option. As I always do, I picked myself up and started over. Starting over by going home until I come back to this fucking city. I am going home to regroup then come back to this town to be somebody. Anybody then the person I was before. Not the broken person I was when I came here.

Big cities don’t take to kindly to lonely hearts. Broken people don’t always find what they are looking for. But I will be the exception. The exception to the rule.

I walked away from her office and watched the room glitter with the sunlight. The same golden color. The same sparkle from the afternoon sun. What I would give to be outside but instead, I am saying goodbye to everything that was familiar.

Life doesn’t prepare you for goodbyes. Life doesn’t prepare you for last looks and the words that haunt you after. Instead, you move forward and hope for the best. Praying, wishing, hoping, that all of this will be a distant memory. Just another story to add in the book of life.

It’s been six years since I have been back. Six years and I still feel like like a visitor in my hometown. This doesn’t feel like home but neither did that big city. Which is why I felt the need to burn my bridges and watch them crumble behind me.

Yet, those words haunt me.

“I hope you find what you’re looking for.”

As I make another last look through the glistening rays of the sun behind me.

Every time I look out my kitchen window.
Every time I finish baking and start washing every dish.
Every time I forget an ingredient for a recipe and have to stop everything and run to the store.

Hand it to me to think of characters that don’t exist. Thinking of characters as real life scenarios. I find myself daydreaming so often, I believe it is real life. Which leads me to Amelie. Her need to fix everyone. Her beautiful wardrobe, her tiny flat overlooking her neighbor’s window. How toward the end of the film she thinks of the man that had caught her attention. How she daydreams that he is right there with her and it draws so much emotion from her that a tear falls from her eye.

It makes me think of the men that don’t know I exist. Even after all this time. How one in particular has been fixated on my mind often that if I ever met him in person, he would be a disappointment. Because I have built him up in my mind; from his mannerisms to his essence that he would be too good to be true in real life. Hand it to me to find a man that doesn’t exist. To fall for someone way beyond my league. I guess over the years I find it’s easier to fall in love with a person that doesn’t exist. That way men like him could never let me down. When every man has failed you. Has brought you up only to bring you down to the worthless way you feel. I fall in love with people that don’t exist. Characters in films, fictional people that could never exist in real life. Hiding from my own reality. The reality of feeling broken by the last man that thought he knew me well.

I believe these daydreams because reality has been too much to bear at times. Because the men on the dating sites have been too busy wanting someone else, because I am never what they are looking for. They take too long to reply, take too much of your time or string you along for their own benefit. They want me when they want me. I have spent too long falling for people that will only bring me down. For them to leave me for someone better.

I wash another dish. Stare at the window, and wish to be somewhere else. To believe that the man I dreamed up, that follows me in my dreams does exist. Forgetting that I have only spoke 4 words to him. Or that we saw each other years later in passing. But sometimes when I forget an ingredient or think of something silly, I feel like Amelie.

It’s then that I stare at my reflection that haunts me through the window. My hair that never falls in the same place as hers does. How people will never care about how much I try to fix things. And no matter what I do, daydreams are never as good as when someone tells you they love you.

I can’t help but feel like Amelie. As I wash another dish and continue to stare out the window. If only movies were real and dreams came true just the same. But they don’t. Back to reality, back to staring out that window.

He didn’t smoke. But everyone else around him did. It was so easy back then to make conversation. Just standing next to a shivering person in the cold, asking for a light. It didn’t matter much to him. He didn’t smoke and everyone else around him did. He would just keep the conversation going.

He’d say things that I would find absolutely fascinating. Stupid things that I think back upon years later. How easy the lines flowed from his tongue. Captivating a shivering crowd just keeping warm from a storm. How he loved lines like “Tobacco and Peppermint”, how each item went well as a before and after thought.

Things about him made him seem off. He didn’t drive. After having his license revoked from driving recklessly in his hometown, he relied on other people to get him where he needed to be. Things I understood. Everyone drove me around and driving always seemed like an after thought. Stupid things I still remember. Why do I still remember these things?

They could have been twins. The same sentiments, the same sense of humor. They couldn’t have been more alike. His only downfall was a dry sarcastic humor that people believed made him a genuinely likable person. We saw through that. Making jokes and calling him every name under the sun. He was not the sun, but how he acted like he was. I don’t know why I thought of him today. Or why after ten plus years, he seems to creep into my mind. But when my head hurts I think of the last time my head hurt. How weather changes my emotional state and it comes back to him.

I always wanted to say goodbye, but I never had a chance to. I wanted to say so many things but every word came out wrong. Tongue tied with wanting to say the right thing but every word tying together and coming out wrong. I find myself talking to him in dreams in cities far from my hometown. In dreams the words flow out easily then they do in my waking day. Some days, it’s easier to see people in dreams then in my waking day. Instead I left a space for other people to fill with words and stories. I live off the adrenaline of other people’s stories. The words that flow so easily off their tongues. When I am left tongue tied with goodbyes.

Tobacco and Peppermint. How I tend to think of that line often.

I think of that crowded bar and watching bands play. How easy they made it seem. How their emotions came out in song and I still struggled to express myself. How the room was muggy and how none of it mattered. The rain poured down and I see you walk with her. Hand in hand not thinking anyone was watching. Just as you walked through the door your hands break apart. Gone back to reality and gone to different ends of the room. Why was I so fixated on that moment. Why that memory about everything else. How poetic it seemed to see people walk in from the rain and break apart once they found shelter. For a moment they were each others shelter, until the real world settled in. That night creeps back to my mind once the weather changes. When I think of rainy days and crowded rooms; finding shelter from storms.

How the singer of a band came up to ask for the time, and stood and stared at a button on my coat. Almost waking me from my haze of dream state. We both became silent for a minute. Maybe in that moment we were both in that dream state. Trying to find the words in waking day. Or maybe he was just staring at a button on a coat of girl that reminded him of something else.

My Mom always had a thing with putting a clove of garlic on the window. As far back as I could remember, it was one of her little superstitions. Like having a glass of water by the bed before you sleep. Eating 12 grapes at midnight on New Year’s Eve. The garlic clove on the window became her little quirk.

She had been doing the garlic thing for so long that when I was younger I believed all windows came with a clove of garlic. When I’d see a window without one, I’d assume the window was broken. It wasn’t until I was a teenager that I understood it was one of her many superstitions.

“Para la mala vibra.”, she would say. For the bad vibes.

When you’re 15, you think anything your parents do is crazy. Everything they do is just weird, off, and super Mexican.

“Mom, you sound crazy. Who would want to give us bad vibes?”, I’d say.

“People. Not all people know the vibra they put out”, she’d respond.

Just another thing to add to the we are different pile. We mexicans are a rare breed of crazy. Superstitions, bad vibes, all of the cosmic universe hocus pocus.

We have a superstition for everything in my family:

Do the sign of the cross before you start a journey. To ensure your journey is blessed.
A St. Christopher medallion to ensure safe travels.
A glass of water by the bed, to trap the bad dreams.
Never place your purse on the floor, that way you will always have money.
A clove of garlic on the window to suck out the “mala vibra” before it enters your house.

I didn’t believe her at times. I didn’t want to. I refused to believe that anyone would want to harm us. Who could want to put out a crazy vibe like that? What would they gain? But I obliged her wishes. I wouldn’t mock or say anything. I just allowed her to work her brujeria and hoped for the best in everything. Keeping a “buena vibra”, a good vibe going.

Two weeks ago, I had a crazy spell of insomnia. Something I have never experienced. My body would collapse on the bed but I couldn’t shut my mind off. I would find myself falling asleep only to wake up an hour later in a panic.

“Something is wrong. Something happened.”, I would think.

I would look out the window and see my street, black as night. For two weeks, I couldn’t get it together. I tried everything. I took baths with essential oils. I slept with lavender on my wrists. I would watch tv until my eyes felt heavy but nothing worked. I would have resorted to sleeping pills, had it not been my mother handing me 3 cloves of garlic.

“I’m sorry, mija. I’ve been so busy, I haven’t changed your garlic. Here, put this garlic on each of your windows”. She instructed.

I haven’t told her I hadn’t been sleeping. Just briefly in passing. I didn’t want her to think it was serious or that I needed to go to the doctor again. But somehow, without saying anything, she always knew.

I haven’t slept right in a few days. I find myself staring at the ceiling at night, praying to sleep. I hadn’t spoke to God in a long time and these past few days, I’ve been having long detailed conversations with Diosito. I refused to believe this is a coincidence. That this garlic clove is going to solve anything. It’s just a vegetable on my window. Everything has an explanation, a scientific answer. But I could hardly keep myself awake anymore. I wanted to cry from all this stupid exhaustion. I am not sure how much longer I can keep this going.

I replaced each clove of garlic, one clove for each of my windows. The first garlic looked like a raisin. Completely brown with the life sucked out of it. Nothing out of the ordinary, it’s how they usually look when my Mom changes them. I find myself doing exactly as she would do when she would change the garlic; saying a prayer to each garlic, something only she would understand. The second garlic started its stage of regrowth. Equipped with a sprout of life inside of itself. My mom always said when a garlic sprouts life, you have buena vibra, good vibes.

Upon replacing the second garlic, I didn’t understand why I had a third. The only rooms I occupy are taken care of, maybe she miscounted? Then I remembered that nothing my mother ever does is without reason. Handing me 3 garlic cloves for each of my windows, means something. I was too tired to ask her; another lecture of why we do this and what it’s for, etc. It wasn’t until I remembered the third window, that I remembered why the third clove. A window in a room that I don’t normally occupy. A room I only go into to throw miscellaneous items away. The room has always been too warm, too cluttered with objects, old relics of the past that I haven’t had the time to clear out. I never go in there, I tell myself. But it’s worth a shot.

I walked toward the window and see the shell of the garlic. I pick up the shell and start replacing the garlic. I say my final prayer, my wish.

“Please allow no harm to me and my family. Please protect us from negativity and harm from the outside world.”, I said.

I start walking toward the trash to throw away the last dried up clove. Upon inspecting it the clove started disintegrating to ash. As if the clove of garlic held on enough just to become a pile of dust. I didn’t know what to do. I just stood there, with the skin of the garlic and felt every emotion inside turn to dust.

“They can’t hurt me no more. They can’t hurt us anymore.”, I found myself saying.

I didn’t wanted to just throw it away in the trash. I wanted to rid myself of that “mala vibra”. I flushed the ash and the garlic skin in the toilet. Walked toward the sink to wash my hands from what happened. Its through that, that I felt a weight lift off my chest and completely off my shoulders.

Was this the reason why I stopped sleeping? Was this the reason of my insomnia? There’s a reason for everything, right?

I walked toward my bed, turned off the light, and covered myself with blankets. I didn’t have a chance to look toward the ceiling before falling into a complete deep sleep. It could just be coincidence. Just my body finally giving out and allowing me to sleep. But I tell you, I have never slept more soundly then I did that night.

Brujeria, superstition, or not, I will continue to change the garlic on my window. As long as it guarantees me a good night sleep.

We grow our hair like weeds for people that will never love us. To later chop off all the dead weight, once they leave us. This time, I wanted to do the leaving. I wanted to cut the man at the source, and resort to every dramatic episode I could think of. Because it was never his choice. It was my choice, my decision, and it was my turn to leave this time.

If you cut your hair, I will leave you.

How I watched every strand of hair grow to the middle of my back. How happy he seemed as he ran his fingers through it, paid no mind to the person before him. It’s when I think I have him, that he leaves without notice. His ghost that trails behind then lingers once he leaves. It’s when I think I have won, that I have lost everything before me.

When you believe you love someone, you’ll fall for anything. Even something simple as leaving every strand of hair on your head, just as they like it. I loved him, from the deep parts of my soul, to every long strand of hair that fell across my back. I watched as my hair became my shield, my armor from the world. My way of hiding these feelings of doubts and worries. My hair continued to grow into a tangled, tousled, mess. I continued to listen to his threats, as empty as the love he gave me. No matter how long my hair grew, he never came back.

I wanted him back for all the superficial reasons I hated. I wanted to stop this numbing suffocated feeling of being alone that drugs nor alcohol could fill. My hair continued to grow and I continued to wait. He said I was perfect and to never change. If I cut my hair, he would only leave me. He would never come back. And I continued to wait. Until the weight of my hair became the weight of my worries. Until my hair became heavy, that I could no longer hold my head up to the sky. We do these foolish things for love but at what cost does it love us back? At what cost do people understand that we are people underneath all that hair? That our hair doesn’t make you love us any less. There were days I wanted to rip every strand from my head. Tear apart the existence of what I believed he wanted. Because for a brief moment I was perfect to you, don’t I ever think of changing.

I watch as the strands of hair fall to the ground. Inch by inch. The memories of you and the ghosts before you. If you cut your hair, I will leave you. I try to keep myself composed. Hold the tears back. Love was never what held us together. The strands of dead hair that laid before my feet; bear witness to this change that comes over me. I am more exposed to the world without my shield. I am showing the world who I really am, beneath the hair.

When the final strand of hair falls, I will forget you. Someone will come in and sweep away the memories scattered on the floor. It won’t be me this time. For the first time, I have stopped listening to ghosts.

He was easy to talk too. Someone, I could come home too. Come home from a long day and talk about everything. He carried a charm about him, that I found myself enamored by things he would say. Every minute became easier to be around him.

Could he really be this charming? Or is it all the drinks I am consuming?

I didn’t love him. Maybe, if anything, I had tiny feelings for him. At this point, who don’t I have feelings for. I would have feelings for a lamp post, because it gave me light. But thats just who I am. I love people only to disappoint them in the end. If anything he just made me feel safe. Like I could be honest about everything without judgement. Some part of him would be familiar, as if I had felt these sentiments before. I just couldn’t pinpoint where.

“Stop looking at your phone. Everything you need is right here”

He didn’t mean it condescendingly. Some parts of it is a corny drunken slur. And yet, I believed him.

I don’t want to go home. As dark as it was at the Bar, I could have stayed here for hours. Maybe I did, I can’t remember. I found myself drinking this ache in my chest away. With every sip, I will cut you out of my heart.

With every sip of his beer, his words would slur into something more meaningful then the next.

I didn’t buy it at the time. At the time, I couldn’t think of anyone else but someone else. Someone I should have left in the dust of my memories. Someone I should never have brought with me in my new life here. The same person that made me check my phone dozens of times, instead of realizing “everything you need is right here”.

“That’s not what you’re looking for”“What am I looking for then?”“Me”

I could have kissed him right there. In my drunken haze, in this dimly lit bar. I could have.

But I didn’t.

No amount of drinks will rid the person that hurt you out of your heart. No matter how many boys you kiss, its not going to take the taste of his lips away. No matter how many times I cut myself, its never going to get him out from under my skin.

I have a hard time letting things go. Letting go is hard when its all you have left to hold on too. It’s in my nature to keep everything. Packed away until I am ready to let go. Things I should have thrown away ages ago. Ticket stubs, receipts, letters from people I haven’t talked to in years. Little mementos, relics of the past that seem like absolute clutter and trash to the naked eye, but mean everything to me. I put so much power behind these items that they become characters themselves. Its almost as if these memories manifest themselves into these mementos, that throwing them away throws away those feelings and sentiments.

My life seems so invested in things I felt happened days ago, when in reality its been years. This power I put behind memories, I can’t help but hold on to things hoping to find that magic again. I look at these relics spilled on to the floor, falling out of books/notebooks, and wonder whats missing in my present that can’t help me shake the past. The past wasn’t perfect, I am no where near the person I was back then, and yet I can’t help but be in love with the past. I loved so many things, so many people and as years go by, I watch things fray and fall apart. I find myself romanticizing this nostalgia and everything that came with it. Seems like only yesterday I was there. Only yesterday my heart was beating faster and I couldn’t shake this feeling in my soul. Even the bad has a beautiful memory, wrapped with a melodramatic soundtrack of my favorite band, and a filter only I could come up with.

Throwing these things away throws away the magic these memories hold. I just want to hold on a little bit longer. I want to hold on to every single word, every single moment, every single memory. Everything. Until I can’t remember a face, a lyric, a name, and a song. Until the band plays it’s last encore and we are left with nothing but the dust of the afterglow. This nostalgia will only break my heart but I can’t help it. I can’t help pretending that everything was once beautiful, even when everything was hurting. I want to be locked in these memories until I have nothing left inside anymore. Holding on to these ticket stubs and holding on to feelings that meant the absolute world to me.

I know this will all disappear. One day I will have to let go of everything that is holding me back. But can I stay here before letters turn to dust and photographs begin to fade. Before we all grow old and completely disappear.

I thought about her for the first time in years. It was bound to happen. When you stop being friends with someone, you pretend they don’t exist. You wish them well and go on with your life. Maybe it was the reconnecting with my favorite band, but for the first time I could say her name without negativity attached behind it. Without feeling any aspect of animosity toward her. Where I didn’t feel any hatred, I felt nothing. Dare I say, I felt a hint of sadness? I don’t know. I get these moments in my life where I believe for a second I can be friends with people from my past. Retain that sense of friendship if only for nostalgic purposes. I have to be honest, I miss people. However, I don’t miss the drama, I don’t miss the lies, etc.

For the first time I felt no animosity toward the past. Where I wanted to let bygones be bygones and sit and talk about everything and in-between. Growing up is harder than it looks. Some of us grow up and change, while others can’t help but remain the same. Here I thought I was the grown up that I had been the one growing up, when in reality I am the one struggling to change. Growing up means letting go of all the hatred and animosity of the past, but I couldn’t do it. Its like I remember why it started, why it happened, and I can’t change the past. I can’t go back and change words or reactions. In the past I had this desperation to be someone else and it never happened. Instead I stayed the same person I had always been. I don’t remember where this desperation to be someone happened. Somewhere between here and there, I forgot what it felt like to be myself. I find the guilt of my own problems seep into this nostalgia, and sometimes I wish I still had someone to talk about the past with.

We were those crazy kids. Those crazy kids that would run at every chance to be in a big city. Small town girls with big city dreams. One of us stayed a dreamer and the other grew up in reality. I am surrounded by reality but it’s the dreaming that still haunts me. The older I get the more I wish I could just ask you a million different things. I wonder if certain things still bother you that did back then. Little things, big things, stupid insignificant things. I wonder if it bothers you that people are married that probably shouldn’t be. I wonder if it bothers you that the same people are having kids who said they wouldn’t. Who said they only wanted to with you. Because sometimes it bothers me, and I guess I just wonder if it bothers you too.

I know we grow up and become even less of our former selves, but I can’t help but wonder. Nostalgia has a funny way of letting you down. Making you remember things and people as they were, only in memory. Some days I wonder what I would do if I saw you again. I know I wouldn’t do a thing. If I saw you on the street, I would forget you just the same. We are not those crazy kids anymore. If we were still friends after all these years, we would have found a way to drift apart. Sometimes I miss you and I know I shouldn’t. But sometimes when I hear a song, or hear a funny story, or see someone from our past, I can’t help but laugh. We grew up and I finally understand now. In order to grow up we have to let go of our nostalgia to make way for our reality. We had to drift apart to be who we need to be. I am still searching and you’ve already found yourself.

I want to remember people how they were. The exact image they portrayed, very long ago in a nostalgic paradise. Where time stood still and you remained in your pristine condition. If only photographs could talk, would I be able to point you out completely. Storytelling is far to good to tell, then by photographic memory.

That’s where I keep you.

Locked away in the vaults of my memory. Hidden in the crevices of my brain, locked away under stories and memories. It doesn’t matter what I do, I continue to search for you. Across the country, across the state, across the faces of the people I loved. Maybe it has always been you. Maybe it was this illusion of staying in one place or coming back home to something. It didn’t matter. People will scan across these words thinking its about a specific person and it’s not. Sometimes there’s that one person you want to forget but you keep being reminded of. Sometimes you want to keep stories personal, and as you get older you can’t keep things to yourself anymore.

I watch buildings change. I watch people grow up. I look at places that meant the world to me, go through different variations of themselves that they become nonexistent. I watch the cities I spent my youth in become gentrified garbage, instead of the kitschy places they used to be. I love the nostalgia, I love the stories, and I know they can’t go on forever. Buildings change, people grow up, and even people we once loved have a reality. Sometimes I think I love you, and then I become the 18 year old with bold expectations. Now a days it’s just a silly notion of my youth. Silly memories of never wanting to grow up. Staying up all night, looking up at the stars, and wishing to be in bigger cities with the people that meant the most to you.

You have become different heroic expectations in many aspects of my stories. Lingering in and out of my mind, coming and going just as you please. Some days I want badly to hate you, but I can’t. Other times I just wished you never existed. Deep down a part of me knows that I am officially crazy. The person I believe you to be and the person you really are, are two different people. This image I keep of you doesn’t exist to anyone else but myself. I feel crazy to even believe who I think you are. The thing with fantasies is that people’s realities are far to realistic. To know who you truly are in reality, kills the dream I have conjured up in my mind. You existed to me. Even if no one believes me. Every hero I write is based on stories of the past and the person I believed you to be. But the past is the past, I can’t keep searching for you in faces of people that no longer exist. I can’t keep holding a candle to a person that is kept only in stories of a nostalgic paradise. When you grow up, you have to let go of the things you once loved. Making way for new memories and journeys, new loves and expectations. Maybe I will always be just jealous cause we’re young and in love, but I have to grow up some time.

18-year-olds grow up to be 33-year-olds. Even you had to grow up some time. You’ll always be the hero at the end of every one of my stories.

I don’t know why I say the things I do. Or if I mean them to begin with. The little green monster comes out to throw everything upside down. Throw salt on all the wounds, to feel bitterness through the sweet. Sometimes I just want to say sorry for the words that slur out wrong. The words that come out in anger instead of love. I wouldn’t be so bold if it wasn’t for things beyond my control. Wouldn’t be so bold if it wasn’t for every last sip of this never ending cup. Its the liquid courage that makes me so courageous. The magic feather of bravery inside every bottle, can, or glass.

How much of what I say is really how I feel inside. How much of what I think is based off of ignorant bliss, hidden inside every tall can or glass. I cannot be this crazy. I cannot be this truly hurt. I cannot be so brave in my skin when I am frightened by my actions. If I mean what I say, what does it mean when I’ve had a helping hand at this.

I don’t mean everything I say, do I?
Not every word of it.
Maybe I do.

I can’t help but feel slightly embarrassed by my actions. A simple drink can turn to three or four, and you find yourself telling secrets to people you shouldn’t. Sometimes I don’t want to keep so many secrets. Sometimes I just want to write them all down for everyone to see. I want to say “I miss you” when I can’t bring myself that sense of honesty. With this drink I feel a powerless power. A sense of normalcy amongst all the crazy conservative feelings. I could do anything, say anything, and yet, I find myself wishing that I hadn’t. I don’t like the way my drink tastes so bitter with my own sour thoughts. Yet, I polish off this drink and beg for more just like it.

You don’t realize how much you drink until you stop. You don’t realize what you’ve said until the flashbacks come back to haunt you. Nostalgia has a funny way of coming back to remind you of things you’ve long forgotten. In a familiar song, in a familiar scent, in a familiar drink, as you watch yourself continue to drink to forget. But I never forget. Everything always comes back, right after I said it wouldn’t hurt anymore. I watch my demeanor change from bad to worse. Watching how my speech changes and watch how easier the words go from my tongue to my lips. Its my actions I want to reconsider, its my words I want to forget. Its everything I’ve said that I can’t help but apologize for. We all want to be accountable for our actions. We all wish we could take back all the nasty things we’ve said.

Maybe I truly am sorry for all the things I have said when I was drunk. In the end what I have said will finally set me free. Allow me to be less bitter, allow me to be less hateful, allow me to stop being such a fucking bitch. Liquor doesn’t make monsters, it just helps the monsters be more vicious. I am tired of being a monster. I dedicate this last drink to you. This last moment, this last taste, everything. I am sorry if I have ever hurt you. I am sorry if I said any nasty things about you. Above all, I am sorry if I was never sorry to begin with.